Communal invention in Prehistoric NIMEs: a case study of Hugh Le Caine’s Electronic Sackbut

Ezra Teboul

Image credit: Ezra Teboul

• oral
• Paper PDF link
• Presence: remote
• Duration: 16
• Type: long
• Session: NIME's Historical Objects

Abstract:

What was the Electronic Sackbut? Based on archival and material evidence, this paper highlights how historical and prehistorical NIME research can highlight community. Some scholars, like Hugh Davies and Gayle Young, have suggested that the first incarnations of Hugh Le Caine’s Electronic Sackbut, usually pre- sented as having been developed between 1945 and 1948, may be the first voltage-controlled synthesizer or even perhaps the first synthesizer. What becomes evident, in the investigations of these claims, is a) a lack of technical documentation has obscured more grounded claims about early NIMEs, and b) that such technical documentation can show how these objects resist monolithic description because they are composed of different parts with different allegiances. The communal negotiations and personal creativity which made them, then, may be a primary motor of creative labor across and beyond the NIME communities.